The Mairasi languages, also known as Etna Bay are a small independent

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Papuan languages The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and East Timor. It is a strictly geographical grouping, and does not imply ...

in the classifications of Malcolm Ross and Timothy Usher, that had been part of

Stephen Wurm Stephen Adolphe Wurm (, ; 19 August 1922 – 24 October 2001) was a Hungarian-born Australian linguist. Early life Wurm was born in Budapest, the second child to the German-speaking Adolphe Wurm and the Hungarian-speaking Anna Novroczky. ...

's Trans–New Guinea proposal. They are named after

Etna Bay Etna Bay (, ) is a bay in eastern Kaimana Regency, situated in the southeastern corner of West Papua (province), West Papua province, Indonesia. Teluk Etnaat GeoNames.Org (cc-by) post updated 2012-01-17; database downloaded on 2015-11-27 Th ...

, located in the southeastern corner of West Papua province, in

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

Languages

The Mairasi languages are clearly related to each other. * Mairasi family: Semimi, Mer,

Mairasi Mairasi ( Faranyao and Kaniran) is a Papuan language of the Bomberai Peninsula of West Papua, Indonesia. The Northeastern dialect may be a distinct language. Distribution Locations: *Kaimana Regency **Interior villages: Umbran, Jamna Fata, Ma ...

, Northeastern Mairasi

Classification

Mairasi cannot be linked to other families by its pronouns. However, Voorhoeve (1975) links it to the Sumeri (Tanah Merah) language, either a language isolate or an independent branch of the Trans–New Guinea family. Pawley and Hammarström (2018) do not consider there to be sufficient evidence for the Mairasi languages to be classified as part of Trans-New Guinea, though they do note the following lexical resemblance between Mairasi, Semimi, and proto-Trans-New Guinea. :

''ooro'' and Semimi ''okoranda'' ‘leg’ < proto-Trans-New Guinea *k(a,o)nd(a,o)C ‘leg’

Phonemes

Usher (2020) reconstructs the consonant inventory as follows:New Guinea World, Etna Bay
/ref> : Vowels are *a *e *i *o *u. *ns is uncommon.

Pronouns

Usher (2020) reconstructs the free and possessive pronouns as: :

Basic vocabulary

Some lexical reconstructions by Usher (2020) are: :

Lexical comparisons

Below is a basic vocabulary table of Mairasi languages (

, Mer, Semimi) with potential cognate matches, from Peckham (1991a,b), quoted in Foley (2018): : Usher's protoforms of the 20 most stable itemsHolman, Eric W., Søren Wichmann, Cecil H. Brown, Viveka Velupillai, André Müller, Dik Bakker (2008). "Explorations in Automated Language Classification". Folia Linguistica, Vol. 42, no. 2, 331–354 in the

Swadesh list A Swadesh list () is a compilation of cultural universal, tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. That is, a Swadesh list is a list of forms and concepts which all languages, without exception, have terms for, such as ...

include the following. :

Notes

References

External links

Mairasi languages database at TransNewGuinea.org
* Timothy Usher, New Guinea World
Proto–Etna Bay
{{language families Papuan languages Language families